Google’s Penguin update and unnatural links warnings
Back in March 2012, some website owners started receiving unnatural links warnings via Google Webmaster Tools. Often, their website’s rank in Google search results would plummet shortly after. Naturally, these people – and many other website owners who weren’t affected – freaked out. (Exhibit A: The 100+ comments on my post about it back then.)
In March, Google began cracking down on link networks like BuildMyRank. People who used these link-building sites probably didn’t realize that paying for or exchanging links is perilous and often goes directly against Google’s guidelines.
Then on April 24, 2012, Google’s Penguin update was rolled out. The Big G said:
“In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s quality guidelines. This algorithm represents another step in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content.”
“…this algorithm affects about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice.”
Penguin is primarily about penalizing web pages with inbound links that violate Google’s quality guidelines – including links that pass PageRank (links without a rel=nofollow attribute) that Google thinks were paid for, as well as link schemes like link exchanges.
According to SearchEngineLand, Penguin is also trying to target sites using spammy techniques like keyword stuffing and purposefully publishing duplicate content, as well as doing shady things like cloaking, sneaky redirects and “doorway” pages. (You can find definitions of each of these in Google’s webmaster guidelines.)
You could have a Penguin problem if…
- You noticed the number of visitors to your site from Google search results or your Google rankings dropped on April 24th (or May 25th or October 5th – the two Penguin refresh dates).
- Anchor text for links pointing to your site are mostly perfect keywords. A “natural” link profile should have a lot of links with anchor text such as your business name, your website address and “click here.” An unnatural link profile would be mostly inbound links with anchor text such as “adirondack chairs” – and linking on these keyword terms looks odd or inappropriate.
- Your home page and awesome blog posts have fewer inbound links than your product or service pages. People are much more likely to link to your home page or interesting content than any sales-y pages…unless they’re paid to.
- You have very few links coming from sites in your industry or niche. Check out the graphs and analysis here.
- You have links to your site from every page of a number of other websites – and they all have keywords as anchor text. These sitewide links can be legitimate – for example, some web design companies put a link to their own site on every page of the sites they build. But if these links are keyword-rich, they can get the web design company in trouble.
To look at the links to your website:
- Use OpenSiteExplorer.org, a free tool up to a certain amount of usage. It will show you which website URLs link to your site, the anchor text they used, and the page and domain authority (similar to PageRank) of the linking web page and website.
- Look in the “Links To Your Site” section of Google Webmaster Tools, and you’ll find a list of the domains that link to your site, along with the number of links that point your way from each domain.
How can a website recover from or prevent a Penguin smackdown?
Ben Lloyd presented the three Ds at a great SEMpdx event earlier this month:
1.) Delete bad links… if possible. You can spend a lot of time crafting an email message and then finding contact info for each website that has shady links to your site. Many sites won’t list any contact info, so your next option is to go to their whois record. Unfortunately, some webmasters make their information private, or list contact info they don’t check anymore. And once you get the emails sent off, who knows if the website owners will get the message, or do anything about it…
2.) Destroy
- If most of the bad links are pointing to an internal page or pages – and not your home page – deleting those pages so they produce a 404 error can help you start fresh, and avoid the penalty for those bad links.
- If you have many bad links pointing to your home page, it may be time to consider completely ditching your current website and domain name, and starting over somewhere else. If you need help ripping the Band-Aid off, Ben reminds us: A website is not your business – it’s a tool for your business.
3.) Dilute your bad links by getting more good natural links.
This will admittedly be a lot of time-consuming work because legitimate content marketing and link building is never easy.
Ben made it clear that people should not just go out and use the same black hat link-building tactics, and buy natural-looking anchor text like their business’s name, instead of a nice juicy keyword phrase.
Check out the video at right (pardon the language) that Ben turned me on to for great tips on white hat link building techniques.
Since Ben’s presentation, Google has introduced a link disavowal tool. So here’s a new option for recovering from Penguin:
4.) Disavow (verb: deny any responsibility or support for)
Matt Cutts of Google told the SEO world in June that Google was considering a tool that would allow website owners to tell Google which links to their site they were unable to get removed, and that they don’t want counted either in their favor or against them.
On October 16, 2012, the Big G launched the Disavow Links tool, but made it very clear that it should be used with caution and only after you’ve tried – and failed – to get iffy links removed at the source. For more information, read our post.
When to know if you’ve recovered from Penguin:
If you make changes that you think should get you back on the straight and narrow in Google’s eyes, you will have to wait until the next Penguin data refresh to see if you have recovered.
Penguin data refreshes have happened on May 25th and October 5th so far, following the initial Penguin launch on April 24th, 2012. You can check a site like SearchEngineLand.com or Google Webmaster Tools’ Twitter account religiously to see if a new update has been announced. Then check your Google Analytics to see if your organic Google search traffic improved after that date.
As always, the best advice is to stick to white hat SEO techniques and put out great content – the kind that people naturally want to share with their friends and colleagues. That should help you weather just about any Google update.
- Only hire SEO companies/employees you really trust to not get you in trouble. Don’t pay for any service that promises to get you on the first page of Google. If they’re making that promise, odds are they’re either lying or using black hat SEO techniques that will eventually get you in trouble with Google.
- Don’t chase the algorithms like a crazy person. If your goal is to stay one step ahead of Google, you may succeed for a while – but it’s going to be stressful, a lot of work, and one day your site may be dead in the water.
- Focus your energy on what Google will always want: good interesting content. If you write excellent content on your website that real people want to share, you’re golden.
- Don’t get stuck in an SEO time warp. It’s easy to stick to the gray or black hat things that worked for you before, like buying links, keyword stuffing, sending link exchange requests, or submitting articles to directories. All of these are outdated now, and Google will continue to try to shut down these artificial methods for trying to look authoritative.
- Embrace social media. It has so many benefits in its own right, and odds are search engines will continue to give social mentions plenty of weight when determining rankings.
Have a question about Google’s Penguin update and “unnatural links” warnings? Want to share your experience? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
This article was written by Kristina Weis, the Director of Marketing for AboutUs who also helps AboutUs clients with their social media and content marketing. She tweets at @KristinaWeis.
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Kristina,
Interesting article – I have several client websites which used to rank really well but don’t any more, and wondered if bad links were the cause. However I’ve not received any warnings via my Google Webmaster Tools account. The sites are still there in Google results but MUCH lower down than before. Other websites for which I have used the same link-building methods have not suffered similarly. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Roger
Roger – Do you know roughly when your clients’ rankings went down? Or do you have access to their Google Analytics and can you see when their organic traffic from Google went down? If it’s tied to some sort of Google update, you and I could hopefully figure it out if we have an approximate date of the change.
THe same as I am, It’s look like I was slaped by Google Penguin.
Now I have to remove all my backlink and start again. It will be a lot of work without outcome.
Great article and advice for leaving behind what doesn’t work and moving forward with what does in the world of SEO. These days, it’s all about doing real marketing, creating real relationships and producing engaging content to attract customers. This is how you become an authority in your industry. The rankings in Google Search will follow as a by-product.
Great post and the video was very enlightening. That would explain a lot of why a website numbers head south. I always thought buying links was crazy and quite unfair for us that really want to do it the honest way. Even lots of artificial traffic is bad for your site. Too bad there is those that do their best to convince you it is okay.
Thanks for your useful information, Do you know is it make problem as a same content for website builder pages with a default content pages, a lot of user create pages without change the contents, so there are huge number of pages with same content as a sub-domain, (all in same main domain)
My website has been affected by the latest Penguin update. I was getting around 400 organic visits a day and suddenly it dropped to 30-40 visits a day. I am so screwd so as my blog. All my website earning are down and i cant see any improvement in last 20 days. Your post pretty much gave an idea and i will surely try to implement these things for my blog..
GO GOOGLE!!!! The internet is becoming a giant commercial. Its about time someone introduced some rules to this madness. There’s no such thing as “good” SEO, and before people were told they have to manage, market, and WORK, to sell their products, they would probably move on to the next “get rich quick on five minutes of work” scheme. Unless you have a unique product or service, or are a sensational writer full of great topics, you have NO BUSINESS ON THE INTERNET!!! Mr. Barnhart seems to have the right idea, or at least the right ethics, to continue with a site. When I search for something, on the web or not, it’s annoying to have a bunch of other things jump in in my line of vision and say “HERE I AM”. This reminds me of back in the day when the highway system was new, and there was so many advertising signs lining the streets, you could barely see the view. Finally a law was passed limiting the number of highway signs, and advertisers threw a fit, even though most would agree driving on those highways was a lot nicer, if not safer, than before. So I say, bring on the penguin, panda, or even the Google Gorilla, if it will help me find what I’m looking for without having to sift through pages of SEO pumped crap. If your product, content, competitive prices, or just sheer social popularity doesn’t bring traffic to your site, YOU DONT DESERVE IT!!! And any attempt to “trick” traffic to your site, is just that.
Great video presentation. I think by doing what real companies do website owners can attract lot more people than just building a links from spammy sites.
Thanks for a great article Kristina. I have adopted the mindset to not let Google’s changes discourage me. It’s difficult at times because for the past year I have seen the traffic to all my sites go up and down like a yo yo.
This past month, I’ve noticed that my Amazon income went from averaging about thirty a month to one dollar.
Some of my niche sites have increased in traffic over the past month and some have decreased. When I look at the big picture of all of the changes Google has made over the past year, they have had a negative effect on my niche sites.
I am thankful that I started building email lists a couple of years ago. Without them I would have lost a lot of income.
Anyway, I am just trying to be level, steady and committed to my internet business even though at times there are large downward curves in my analytic reports.
I link my website in differents directories in relation with my business. But I´m not quiet because all is different in this momento with google. I have a blog and I write about my business, that’s fine. I work very hard in my website.
I see competing pages with a lots of link’s bought and those following in the top of google. ??????
regards
Ana Karina
My traffic started declining in January 12 and has been on a steady downswing ever since. My main keywords have dropped from first page to oblivion on Google, although Yahoo still has me near the top. Any idea what happened in January?
Not sure our search experience is better as now the Google changes have encouraged many search pages to look like the high street, so only the same old big players and the little guy now is out, search is dull.
This was the best article I’ve read yet on the subject. Aside from the solid advice about how to recover if your website suffered as a result of Penguin, I like what you say towards the end: “stick to white hat SEO techniques and put out great content”.
Thats some good advice at the end – focus on good content. However, it never works “just” focusing on content. One good and right strategy is – content first, links latter.
Hi Kristina, Great Blog post & Video! Thanks for the information. I also believe that people need to invest the time in keeping their website content fresh and your point regarding Social Media is true. I recommend my clients spend the time developing their own unique Social Media persona and those that do, find that it really works well for them.
Thanks again! Danielle
Great advice, we’re badly hit by that update. I’m still hoping there would be another update some other time especially today that I find big G sharing a lot of crap sites in page one.
Content Content Content, is the clear message.
Though it is laughable that G and their crew tell you that the best SEO is no SEO – yeah, right!
Google does seem to have become one large billboard. The little guys are being pushed out in favour of big commerce, how is that improving the search “experience?”
Thanks for this article Kristina, Penguin has been really bad for some sites, this kind of guide is very useful.
In the “destroy” section, you can also do with 301 redirects, it looks to work also and is better to keep the juice.
Thank you for the great article! Google can be so vague in their communication, but it always good to stay up to day on what they are rolling out in regards to SEO.
Thank You,
Kisar S. Dhillon
I started my website recently and it has seen a steady increase of traffic ever since. Yeah, I focus mainly on the content and building quality backlinks to my website. I’l watch out for the other pointers you mentioned regarding link building
Thanks…
Has anyone used the Google Disavow tool yet? I’m a little sceptical of using it to be honest.
Great breakdown of penguin. It was only a matter of time before Google brought down the hammer in an algorithmic way. I still see some pretty blatant, spammy links being built, but the game has definitely increased in difficulty.
I lost all my rankings just after the October 5th refresh of Penguin. Now I am trying to figure out what I can do to get things back if possible. First thing for me : get rid of some sitewide backlinks and see what happens. Second : keep continuing publishing new quality content. But if I a understand well I will have to wait next Penguin data refresh to see if I have recovered. And that seems to be every now and then… I guess it will take some time before I recover… Anyway thanks for this article. Very informative and doesn’t try to sell you a solution to get you out of a Penguin disaster.
Thank you for a great article that will make us better know what a google adsense regulatory and how we make our site should running in a proportionally, and will be a profitable site,
Our site http://www.aviationcare.com
As you know in March 2012, we have got a warning for our site running with false visitors as Google found, and our adsense advertisement removed from account.
The fact that someday we offering by someone to increase the visitors and we ask to him to do, but we don’t know what the process of he performed, in our thinking that what he did was in legally, actually we don’t know this system and actually we don’t know the IT, we know a little.
After got warning and removed our account our site visitors drop badly and described in Alexa rank severe drop down.
As our site as along running with false visitors we never paid by Google. and we never make account anymore again after that till now.
For this happen we want apologies to Google Adsense, and start now we will not doing anymore.
Then please your suggest us to recover our site from Alexa rank and we want to ask you “are we or our site can apply Goolgle Adsense again ”
Thank you very much for cooperation, we appreciated your suggestion
Best Regards,
Sugito Sukardi for aviationcare.com
Great post, Kristina – thanks! I don’t know how I missed the news about the new Disavow tool. I think it’s always a good idea to stay off of Google’s radar in instances like these, but good to know there is a last ditch option if you run out of options.
Great advice, we’re badly hit by that update. I’m still hoping there would be another update some other time especially today that I find big G sharing a lot of crap sites in page one.
Very nice article on Google Penguin.
I guess many people who are hit hard instead of complaining, you should really look into getting those unnatural links removed. Never get links from unrelated site or use any spun article. Always give the best articles to your viewers.
Content is still king.
How did I not comment yet? Thanks for the shout out and for including my presentation!
Sometimes I have the feeling that Google is doing things that are more in favor of themselves then to us. Many small businesses suffer loses after the updates and still many are finding ways to recover. I think would be best if your business is built not depending on Google.
My website : http://hyundaioto.com.vn , has been listed from Google Penguin Update v1 to now. Althought I fixed many time ( code, url) but it’s seem not improve any. I lost some top keywords, can somebody help me?
Thank you for the great article!. I think it’s always a good idea to stay off of Google’s radar in instances like these, but good to know there is a last ditch option if you run out of options.
Hello after google update penguin my 80% visit decrease i am very confusing that what to do i learn some poiont herre but is backlink with same text color and background gives us negative point
I guess it will take some time before I recover… Anyway thanks for this article. Very informative and doesn’t try to sell you a solution to get you out of a Penguin disaster.
I guess many people who are hit hard instead of complaining, you should really look into getting those unnatural links removed.
Great article and explained a ton to what happened to me and my clients last year. I understand what google is trying to do by cleaning up its content and reducing spammers but old techniques to drive traffic are now dead. Looks like we ned to find alternative routes. Thanks
hello very blog
My blog still down, :(
I am so glad that I seem to have been spared the Google chop, in fact my numbers increased quite noticeably after the Oct Penguin Update.
Since being a blogger for 10 months, I have come to realize that Google knows everything about everyone, all the time, and forever.
It is already like Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother surveillance and control network – eyes and ears in every room and on every screen, plus rules that you break at your peril etc etc.
I find it interesting how we all accept this as being ‘ok’. Meanwhile, I keep my head down and do my best to follow the rules – like everyone else!
But Google cannot stop me thinking my own thoughts….yet.
My site was in a great place #2 last year (2012). But yesterday I found it dropped to #9, now I am trying to figure out what I can do to get things back if possible. Thanks for your article
That penguin hits pretty hard for a bird…damn -_-
Hey
I know that its an Interesting article – I have several client websites which used to rank really well but don’t any more, and wondered if bad links were the cause. However I’ve not received any warnings via my Google Webmaster Tools account. The sites are still there in Google results but MUCH lower down than before. Other websites for which I have used the same link-building methods have not suffered similarly. Any ideas?
Thanks,
AIS Infotech Team
It says on my webmaster tools that I have 3200 backlinks, I need to remove them all now. LOL. Alot of job… Maybe I’ll start a whole new domain! Anyway, Kristina, thanks alot! Nice Article!
Hi,
I have problem with Penguin since this week. I don´t underted the situation. I have a good SEO and never buy link. But I had a link in a place but google told me that from this site I had 50.000, I don´t undertend it.
My website is in the top 10 for many keywork but google told me that I have only 24 link.
I would like to know if this problem can be becouse the last mothz I had the server 7 days fall.
best regards
My site did not get a warning or anything, WMT is calm as the sea, except when there was a problem with backlink counts back then which now has been solved.
I have added new content, change the layout, social bookmarking and everything, none works. I am at the end of the rope now, and thinking about letting the site as it is and start a new with a new site (already started a new site, just cant let go of the old site). Many years of sweat and blood wasted.
My site went backwards, and I am still not a 100% sure why it did this, but I have changed a few things and it is slowly getting recognition in the results.
Thanks for the suggestions. My site traffic too has been seriously impacted by Google’s latest “update”. I will try and implement some of the things you mentioned in the article and am hoping for the best.
Thanks for the penguin update info! Google updates his algorithm very often and it’s hard to keep all these updates clear.